Look Like The Innocent Flower Analysis — Transcript

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1. 0:00[Music]
2. 0:00morning everyone let's zoom in on one of
3. 0:02the key quotations from the play and see
4. 0:05what it can tell us it's aquan scene 5
5. 0:07and the quotation is look like the
6. 0:09innocent flower but be the serpent under
7. 0:12it
8. 0:16[Music]
9. 0:18so lady macbeth has decided that the
10. 0:20quickest route to the throne is to
11. 0:22murder king duncan so in act one scene
12. 0:24five she's trying to convince her
13. 0:26husband that this is the right thing to
14. 0:28do she says you need to act how they
15. 0:30expect you to act but you should look
16. 0:33like the innocent flower but be the
17. 0:35serpent under it meaning you should look
18. 0:37innocent to people's faces but you
19. 0:39should be prepared to be cunning and
20. 0:41deadly in secret essentially i want you
21. 0:44to be two-faced to be duplicitous to be
22. 0:47deceitful first off you have the
23. 0:49imperative verbs of look and be showing
24. 0:52that lady macbeth is the one in command
25. 0:54here look up the roles and expectations
26. 0:56of women at this time in society to see
27. 0:59why lady macbeth giving orders to a
28. 1:01husband is atypical now if we look
29. 1:04specifically at the imagery the two
30. 1:06words that stick out to us are flower
31. 1:09and serpent so we could zoom in to the
32. 1:11connotations of these two nouns so let's
33. 1:14start with the flower simile flowers
34. 1:16stereotypically are seen as feminine
35. 1:19particularly so in the jacobean period
36. 1:22that shakespeare was writing it so by
37. 1:24saying look like the innocent flower
38. 1:27lady macbeth could be telling her
39. 1:28husband to look unassuming quiet gentle
40. 1:31and calm stereotypically women of the
41. 1:34period were supposed to act as delicate
42. 1:36pacifists and that's how she wants
43. 1:38macbeth to act a bit of a reoccurring
44. 1:41theme for lady macbeth is to discuss her
45. 1:44husband's masculinity or lack of it
46. 1:47and she says look like the innocent
47. 1:49flower not be the flower essentially she
48. 1:52wants him to be false and deceiving
49. 1:55now flowers also have connotations of
50. 1:58life ironic considering the nature of
51. 2:00lady macbeth's plans for duncan and it
52. 2:02could be said that flowers are
53. 2:03attractive so perhaps she's telling
54. 2:05macbeth to radiate positivity and purity
55. 2:09attracting duncan closer so that like a
56. 2:12venus fly trap they can pounce
57. 2:14yet the innocence aspect means that they
58. 2:17would not be suspected
59. 2:19the image of the peaceful innocent
60. 2:21flower is somewhat juxtaposed by the
61. 2:23image of a deadly serpent notice how
62. 2:26shakespeare doesn't write be the wolf or
63. 2:28be the lion he picks the word serpent
64. 2:31specifically for its range of
65. 2:33connotations pretty much all of which
66. 2:36are negative
67. 2:37so serpents are reptiles cold-blooded
68. 2:40creatures that have evolved over
69. 2:42millennia to be ruthless uncaring and
70. 2:44efficient killers
71. 2:46the venomous side of serpents tells us
72. 2:48that they're deadly lady macbeth wants
73. 2:50her husband to be the serpent to be
74. 2:53ruthless and merciless in his betrayal
75. 2:55of the king and speaking of betrayal
76. 2:58that's another connotation of snakes
77. 3:00this idea of backstabbing conniving and
78. 3:02treachery is often associated with
79. 3:04serpents such as the playground insult
80. 3:07of calling someone a snake and this
81. 3:09seems to stem from the treachery of the
82. 3:11snake in the bible in the book of
83. 3:13genesis the cunning serpent is presented
84. 3:16as deceptive it tells us that god said
85. 3:19adam and eve can eat the fruit of any
86. 3:21tree from the garden of eden but that
87. 3:22they should not eat the fruit from the
88. 3:24tree of knowledge of good and evil this
89. 3:27is the forbidden fruit
90. 3:29and a serpent turns up and tells eve
91. 3:31that if they do eat it their eyes will
92. 3:33be opened and they shall be as gods
93. 3:35so eve eats it she gives them to adam
94. 3:37who eats it and god is furious and
95. 3:39punishes them after he finds out that
96. 3:41the serpent deceived them
97. 3:43now whether you believe in the story or
98. 3:45not is another matter but in the highly
99. 3:47religious jacobean period of the early
100. 3:4917th century you can bet that these
101. 3:51connotations come to mind in the charged
102. 3:54word of serpent
103. 3:56now what's this got to do with macbeth
104. 3:58well macbeth is a story about the
105. 4:00temptation of power as is the story of
106. 4:02adam and eve knowing the outcome of the
107. 4:05forbidden fruit story also foreshadows
108. 4:07that if macbeth takes the role of the
109. 4:09serpent under it both macbeth and lady
110. 4:12macbeth will be punished for it just
111. 4:14like adam and eve were
112. 4:16essentially the murder of duncan is the
113. 4:19eating of the apple lady macbeth tempts
114. 4:21macbeth into doing it showing her
115. 4:23manipulative and sinful side and
116. 4:25ultimately leads to the downfall of both
117. 4:28of them
118. 4:29now add to this that in the book of
119. 4:30revelations it tells us that the serpent
120. 4:33from the story was actually satan in the
121. 4:35skies the word serpent then comes loaded
122. 4:39with the connotations of the ultimate
123. 4:41evil death and punishment we could take
124. 4:44it that lady m wants her husband to be
125. 4:46ready to commit acts of evil such as the
126. 4:48murder of a man he sworn to protect
127. 4:51or if we consider that satan the devil
128. 4:54is a fallen angel who was cast out of
129. 4:56heaven perhaps the act of killing duncan
130. 4:59will lead to the downfall of the brave
131. 5:02and noble macbeth
132. 5:04now there are absolutely loads of of the
133. 5:06connotations of serpents i mean just
134. 5:08look at mythology the hair of the
135. 5:10gorgons and medusa
136. 5:12cerberus the three-headed dog who has a
137. 5:14snake for a tail and a serpentine mane
138. 5:16or even the symbolism of the serpent in
139. 5:19the modern day symbol for doctors so
140. 5:22there are loads of other avenues that
141. 5:24you could go down when looking at the
142. 5:25connotations of the word serpent these
143. 5:27are just a few
144. 5:29now i get it maybe you're thinking that
145. 5:32flowers and serpents were the first
146. 5:34thing that popped into shakespeare's
147. 5:35head and there's no real significance to
148. 5:37them at all
149. 5:39bear with me
150. 5:40consider that when the scottish king
151. 5:42james ascended to the throne of england
152. 5:44and scotland in 1603 shakespeare's
153. 5:47acting group changed their name to the
154. 5:49king's men because james the first
155. 5:51became their patron
156. 5:53in 1605 there was a foiled assassination
157. 5:56attempt of james a bunch of catholics
158. 5:58tried to blow up parliament while the
159. 6:00king was inside
160. 6:02and we refer to this each year on the
161. 6:045th of november on bonfire night
162. 6:07now in order to commemorate the foiled
163. 6:08plot james the first had a medal made
164. 6:12on the medal was the image of a serpent
165. 6:15underneath a bunch of flowers
166. 6:17meant to represent the deception and
167. 6:19treachery so it was something that was a
168. 6:22bit of a hot topic in the news at the
169. 6:24time
170. 6:25and the next year shakespeare wrote a
171. 6:27play about the assassination of a
172. 6:29scottish king and writes that the wife
173. 6:31of the assassin tells him to look like
174. 6:33the innocent flower but be the serpent
175. 6:35under it probably not a coincidence
176. 6:38now if we take today's quotation and a
177. 6:40few others we can see that there's a
178. 6:42reoccurring theme in macbeth that of how
179. 6:45appearances are deceiving or how things
180. 6:47look versus how they actually are
181. 6:50add to this the three hallucinations of
182. 6:52the floating dagger banquo's ghost and
183. 6:55the blood on lady macbeth's hands and
184. 6:57it's clear that this theme runs
185. 6:59throughout the entire play
186. 7:01the question you would need to answering
187. 7:02your responses is why you believe
188. 7:04shakespeare chose to make this a
189. 7:06recurring theme why include all of these
190. 7:09themes of deception and betrayal and
191. 7:12references to it what would it add to
192. 7:14the play
193. 7:15and what effect would he want this to
194. 7:17have on his targeted audience
195. 7:20and that's all for today's video if you
196. 7:22found it useful a like or a comment
197. 7:24would really help the channel grow
198. 7:26thanks for watching and happy revising